A student group at the University called ‘Students Teaching Against Racism in Society’, created a poster campaign to highlight the racial stereotyping in Halloween party dresses, the Daily Mail reports.

The posters highlight the crass racial and cultural stereotypes that emerge in the Halloween fancy dress event each year.

By Emanuella Grinberg"I think it's almost impossible to be ironic while being racist, so irony is lost," said Jelani Cobb, a professor of Africana studies at Rutgers University and the author of "The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress."

"To treat a character like Batman or Superman as a Halloween costume is one thing, but to treat an entire ethnicity as a costume is something else. It suggests that people conflate the actual broad diversity of a culture with caricatures and characters."

While Italian-Americans can be stereotyped as gangsters and Irish-Americans as hard drinkers, there are no pervasive stereotypes for whites on the same level that allow for them to be caricatured as a Halloween costume, Cobb said.

"The more we look at people as caricatures, the harder it is to operate as democracy," he said. "What underlies this kind of costuming is the belief that these people aren't quite equal to what we are or aren't as American as we are or that you as a person who's not member of that group should be able to dictate how painful stereotype should be."'Racist' Halloween costumes stir debate

Ohio university group's 'We're a culture, not a costume' campaign goes viral

By Marlene HabibBlogger slams 'Eskimo Tease' costume

New Westminster, B.C., blogger Jarrah Hodge, a UBC graduate in women's studies and sociology, said costume companies are constantly coming up "with new ways to advance racial stereotypes and cultural appropriation, and sexualize women in every single profession and identity you could think of."

On her "Halloween Post," Hodge said she recently came across a distinctly Canadian racist costume called the "Eskimo Tease." The packaging for the outfit shows a buxom and lean blond in a cropped velvety long-sleeved top, a short flared skirt, a hoodie and legwarmers—all white-fur trimmed and made of velvety light blue material.

"The term 'Eskimo,' while a highly contested term, has a racist past and is generally unacceptable in Canada," Hodge writes. "The picture on the packaging and the costume name continues in the tradition of other racist costumes like the ever-popular 'Geisha Girl' or 'Pocahontas' in implying that racial identity can be boiled down to a recognizable outfit. It's white people creating symbols to define other races, then appropriating those symbols without any acknowledgment of their history."